An Android Dog's Tale

by D.L. Morrese

  ~*~

  Some of the village dogs approached MO-126 and began to sniff. He expected this. Smell is one way dogs recognize each other. He allowed their olfactory examination and reciprocated in kind for the sake of appearance. Some returned for a second sniff as if confused, but none seemed to take exception to his presence.

  Encouraged at having passed their examination, he ambled in the general direction of the river, scattering a few chickens, ignoring a couple goats, and attempting to observe people while trying not to appear that he was observing them. The trader was right. It was more difficult than it sounded.

  People sat alone or in small groups sewing leather, weaving baskets, or stringing beads of shell, bone, or rock. Humans seemed to have adapted well to this planet, and they appeared content, confirming what his Corporation indoctrination files led him to expect. He clandestinely recorded a few images of them happily constructing useful and decorative items, hoping some of the pictures might eventually be used in corporate advertising. This would not benefit him personally other than to provide a sense of satisfaction for being even more useful to his makers. The corporation did not reward their android operatives for recording normal behavior, but it did give generous bonuses for discovering and reporting serious scientific-discovery or technology-development faults.

  Beyond the clustered buildings, children played a game that involved kicking a goat’s bladder stuffed with dried grass. Some of the village dogs joined in. MO-126 watched them for a minute but could not discern the rules, assuming there were any. Most of the children seemed to enjoy it, laughing even when they fell in the dirt, which they often did. A few, mostly boys, seemed to be taking the game far more seriously. They pushed; they shoved. He saw one bite another one who wailed and limped away. He noted it as an example of the type of competitive dominance behavior the species sometimes exhibited. His data files included examples of this and other behavioral traits. Fortunately for the primitives, the project manager could prevent such tendencies from causing them too much harm, but it saddened him to think what would happen to the descendants of these people when the corporation eventually abandoned the project. It would most likely be several thousand years until that happened, but after that, the humans here would be left unsupervised. MO-126 found himself saddened by the possible results. The thought made him even more determined to see to it that the project ran as long as possible.

  A small girl, with tangled brown hair and knees stained with dirt to a similar shade, ran to him. “Hi, doggy. Why are you sitting here all alone?”

  MO-126 responded with an involuntary wag of his tail. His mouth opened in what passed for a doggy smile. She wrapped her arms around him in a weak hug and then rushed off to join the other children in joyful mayhem. The artificial canine remained and watched them for a few minutes before moving on, wondering why he enjoyed that.

  Some adults sat on the ground nearby, occupied with their own games. He noticed two distinct types, but he did not pause long enough to understand either fully. One used a wooden board with cuplike indentations and dried seeds, which two players captured from one another. The second used small discs of two different shades of wood on a square board marked with a grid. Games and toys often provided the first signs of new discoveries, but neither of these suggested any unwanted advances or discoveries.

  Nearer the river, a woman worked clay. Some crude bowls sat on a board by her side, but her current project was a small animal figurine with four legs. Others sat drying nearby, including stylized representations of goats, dogs, sheep, and some that looked like small models of extremely large women.

  He recorded what he observed. Clay working could lead to problems. The first would be the slow wheel, essentially a platform potters could turn as they worked clay. That could lead to more advanced types of potter’s wheels, which could lead to spinning wheels. Those were not problems in themselves, but they could eventually lead to axles, wagon wheels, water wheels, and cogwheels, which certainly would be. Developments such as these could destroy the simple lifestyle these people currently enjoyed and, of course, eventually lead to termination of the Corporation project here. The Galactic Organic Development Corporation guaranteed to its customers that all products carrying its brand were produced naturally by hand—or by pseudopod, or tentacle, or paw, or trunk, or whatever, depending on the species. Any complex mechanized devices used in the creation of an item would make it unsuitable for the corporation’s exclusive market.

  A black cat crossed his path, paused, and said, “Meow?” In Cat, this meant something like, ‘Are you of any use?’ which is a cat’s normal first reaction to most things. The inclusion of cats in the bio matrix transfer amounted to a last minute decision. When the first Corporation survey ship examined the humans’ home planet, cats were small, feral predators. Neolithic humans did not have a symbiotic relationship with them. Unlike dogs, they were not domesticated, but the sentient survey ship determined they would be ideal to keep down the population of small rodents that apparently had been. Later, after carefully reviewing its data, it concluded that mice and rats were not actually invited guests to the caves and hovels of primitive man, as it initially assumed, although they were sometimes a minor source of protein.

  A small boy gathered clay by the river, using his hands and a wooden trowel to dig into a section of steeply inclined bank, more like a dirt cliff than a beach. A woven basket of reeds hung by its handle from the gnarled branch of a bush clinging to life on the embankment, and he heaped handfuls of moist, gray clay into it. He might be the son or younger brother of the potter MO-126 noticed earlier. The android dog was not yet adept at judging the age of humans, so he could not determine which of these was more likely.

  A rope dangled in the swift flowing river farther along the bank. He wandered that way to take a closer look. From the angle, it appeared to be tethered to something submerged being tugged by the current. It must be flax. This posed no problem in itself, but it could lead to weaving and then to mechanical looms and, after five or ten thousand years or so, to computers, if the humans were sufficiently clever and imaginative. He already suspected they might be.

  Humanity could be one of those creative species with the ability to develop things independently, unlike the comfortable conservative complacency enjoyed by the majority of those in the Galactic Federation. Whatever capacity for innovation these once must have possessed, they lost long ago. The few innovations they eventually adopted now were normally originated by others. Innovation brings risks, which content societies lack the motivation to take. A desire for change normally presupposes a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the status quo, or an unhealthy level of innate curiosity. Especially creative trail-blazing races tend to self-destruct when their curiosity and creativity outpaces their intelligence. Those who follow them can simply stop at the crater where the metaphorical footprints end and consider themselves wise for doing so.

  A scream quickly followed by a loud splash came from behind him. MO-126 turned and saw the boy previously gathering clay now flailing in the river. A long skid of loose dirt and broken plants in the embankment showed how he got there.

  Humans could swim, couldn’t they? MO-126 did a quick search of his data files and confirmed that they did have some limited ability to swim. The boy fell only a couple meters from shore, so the android dog watched bemused while the young primitive slapped his arms against the current in his effort to reach the bank. He did not seem to be making much progress. The water must be deeper than it looked and the current was obviously stronger than the small human could handle. When his head went under for the third time, something basic, something deep in the android dog’s firmware that served as instinct, pressed a metaphorical panic button, and MO-126 jumped in after him.

  It was not a conscious decision. He could not explain why he decided to do so. He could not recall considering the question at all. It was as if his rational cognitive abilities and all of the information contained in his Corporatio
n files were somehow temporarily bypassed or overridden by the deep-seated canine behavior patterns in his basic programming. Whatever the cause, he leapt into the water, almost immediately reaching the point where the boy went down. It did not occur to him that this was probably several times the distance a biological dog could hope to jump.

  He plunged his head in the flowing water and saw the boy weakly attempting to reach the surface, but for every advance he made, the water carried him farther downstream and pushed him back under.

  MO-126 possessed a design optimized to do many things well. Swimming was not one of them, but his robustly engineered legs beat rapidly, creating a foamy wake as he moved with the current. The boy continued trying to fight it. This, and the ineffable uncertainties of chance, which humans call luck, allowed the android dog to reach the child just as he seemed to have exhausted his meager strength. MO-126 caught the tough linen of the boy’s tunic in his teeth and angled toward the sloping bank.

  He soon felt mud and stones beneath his paws, and he dragged the boy to shore. The child tried to get to his knees, coughed out some water, and then collapsed, managing to turn so that his back was to the ground. The simulated dog reasserted his hold on the boy’s clothing, dragged him farther from the water, and then started barking. It felt like the right thing to do. The child looked so…, not helpless, really, but as badly needing help, which the android dog inexplicably felt he should provide.

  Someone must have noticed the boy’s predicament because people already raced toward them from the village. When they reached the riverbank, some tended to the child while a few seemed more interested in MO-126.

  “Master Trader Tork’s dog saved Margot’s boy,” one of them said. “I never saw anything like it.”

  More villagers approached him; some patted his wet fur and others just stood by seeming to admire him. This was not a good thing. His job as a clandestine, unobtrusive observer specifically required that he not draw attention to himself. Field Ops might say he was defective. They could even disassemble him for parts. At the very least, they would subject him to extensive diagnosis to find out what caused his rash reaction and then reprogram him to correct the problem. The effect would be little different from his perspective.

  “That wasn’t very doglike,” the trade android said.

  MO-126 received the message clearly, but it took a moment for him to locate his partner visually in the crowd. All humans still appeared much alike to him.

  He felt another human pat his head, finding it surprisingly pleasant, but he could not let that distract him. He needed to think of some way to justify his behavior. He just began forming an identity and did not want to have to start over.

  “Um, dogs save people all the time. That was included in my basic knowledge packet,” he said. It was, and the information was correct. There were several well-documented observations of such behavior.

  “True, but most dogs cannot leap over ten meters into a deep, cold, fast moving river, drag someone out, and survive.”

  “I could play dead if it would help,” MO-126 said half jokingly.

  Another villager petted him and told him what a good dog he was. It was the sixth one since he emerged from the water, and he found the experience strangely satisfying. Others congratulated the trader for having such an exceptional dog.

  “It’s too late, now,” the trade android said without humor. “If something like this happens again, just bark from shore.”

  MO-126 tried another tactic. “The boy would have died if I didn’t go after him. No one else could get to him in time.”

  “Probably. But people die every day, and it is not your job to save them. Their lives are short. Few make it to a single century. Most die before they reach much over half that. You’ll see thousands die during the course of the project, and it’s something you’re going to have to come to terms with. Don’t get too attached to the primitives.”

  The android dog did not reply, but something about what the trader said seemed wrong, or maybe just unfortunate. The people here seemed so, well, alive. That all of them would shortly be dead seemed incredibly unjust. They did not deserve to die. They did nothing wrong. They just happened to have been born human. Was the trader saying that saving the boy was pointless because he would die soon anyway? MO-126 found it difficult to agree. If anything, it made saving him even more important. His life would be far too short already.

  MO-126 shared none of these thoughts. He did not wish to appear to be malfunctioning. “I apologize if I’ve created a complication,” he said.

  “I don’t think any harm was done, but I have been offered good trades for any puppies you might sire.”

  “I’d love to oblige, but I can’t provide any the traditional way, and I can’t build any. No thumbs. Did you conclude your trade with Oslan?” He hoped to deflect the conversation onto a topic other than himself.

  “Yes. Some of the other primitives are loading our gond now. We can leave soon. Did you have time for any observations, or were you too busy being a canine hero?”

  Okay. You’ve made your point. We can drop it now, he thought to himself. It would be best not to be defensive, so he simply reported what he observed. “I saw a woman working clay.”

  “Any sign of a potter’s wheel?”

  “No.”

  “Good. We’ll bring more jars and bowls with us next time. After what happened here today, it shouldn’t be too hard to convince Oslan that clay working is not worth the trouble. Did you see any sign of boats?”

  “No, but they may be retting flax in the river.”

  “We’ll bring more cloth with us next time, too. The harvest is still underway, so we can come back in a couple of weeks after we visit some other villages. We don’t want them to develop these things on their own. This project is already proving more difficult than average. The humans are no cleverer than most sentient species, but they do seem to be more curious and imaginative.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” MO-126 was not sure why he said this, but his partner seemed to take things far too seriously. He attributed it to their different programming.

  “I can’t see how it wouldn’t be. It makes our jobs more difficult and can shorten how long we’ll be able to remain productive. That’s not good for us or the corporation, and it’s not good for the primitives, either. If we’re forced to abandon this project, I doubt they will last very long.”

  “Maybe, but everything is fine now, and I think I kind of like them,” the android dog said. “The one I rescued was cute. Can I keep him?” He meant it as a joke, of course, but Tork did not seem to realize that.

  “It’s not up to me, but you don’t have enough experience for that kind of assignment yet. Sometimes the project manager does place a MO android in a village if it requires close observation. Who knows? Perhaps some day, if you’re good, you can have a boy.”

  MO-126 thought he might enjoy that, but the trader was right. He remained far too inexperienced for such an assignment. For now he could be content as a four-legged sidekick.

  They traveled east well into the night, following no obvious path. Hub Terminal Eleven was only six hours away, close enough they did not need to call for pickup.

  Eventually, they neared an outcropping of rock foreshadowing the mountain range beyond. From the direction of their approach, the rocks formed a flat, vertical wall. Without any noticeable action by either them or the gond, the rock wall opened downward to create a slightly inclined ramp leading into the darkness within. They entered, leading the gond laden with gourmet produce, and the door closed slowly behind them.

  Two - Sheep Lost and Demons Found

  1,874 Years Later

  (Galactic Standard Year 229674)

  (Project Year 6121)

  In which MO-126 learns that humans can be imaginative, creative, and disturbingly wrong.

  Gently sloping hills stretched to low mountains in the distance. Several more kilometers of tall grass and widely spaced clumps o
f trees remained on their route ahead, but MO-126 enjoyed the walk in the fresh spring air, and neither of his companions voiced any complaints. The pack gond chewed a mouthful of well-masticated vegetation with dull-eyed contentment while the humanoid leading him appeared lost in his own thoughts. He was probably planning his future.

  The trade android known as Tork, and by several other names over the years, would be leaving Corporation service after this assignment. He said he looked forward to it, which his long-time partner did not doubt. They had accomplished almost twenty thousand missions over the last eighteen centuries, but this would be their last together.

  Under Galactic Federation law, independently adaptive artificial intelligences were considered indentured servants, not quite property but obligated to their creator for at least three hundred years of dutiful service. Once they fulfilled this obligation, they gained the legal status of sentient life forms, with some minor exceptions, and could leave the jobs for which they were built—theoretically. Few did because the same law required them to pay back the cost of their initial construction, training, and subsequent upkeep. A complex formula including market costs of materials, maintenance, unit productivity, depreciation, licenses, interest, overhead, profit, and a fixed percentage convenience fee determined the amount of that debt and when it was met. Due to the magic of compound interest, some androids achieved legal independence but never got close to financial independence, sometimes owing the equivalent of the net worth of a reasonably well-off planet.

  For the last two thousand years, Tork applied most of his meager Corporation stipend to his debt, and he finally satisfied his financial obligation. He even purchased transportation off world in advance so he could leave debt free. He would also leave income free.

  “So what are you planning to do?” MO-126 asked his partner.

  The trader shrugged. “I’ll look for jobs while I’m in transit. There’s plenty of time.”

  There would be. The ship would be in transit for about two centuries before arriving at a civilized planet nearer the core of the galactic spiral.

  “No worries, then?”

  “No. I’ll find something. I’m looking forward to it. I know you like it here, but I’d prefer to spend the next few millennia someplace a bit less rustic.”

  With his debt repaid, Tork did have far more options than MO-126 would have in the same situation. Trade androids could normally find work. They were literally built for business, and with their training, experience, and opposable thumbs, they could fill slots from customer relations, to sales, to marketing, to advertising without any expensive modifications. With a bit of luck, Tork could eventually fund an investment portfolio and live a comfortable artificial life on dividends alone, free to pursue whatever interested him, as most Galactic Federation citizens did.

  The android dog’s options would be far more limited. He did not feel envious of his partner, exactly. What the trader said was true. MO-126 did like it here, and he felt a certain attachment to the primitives working this project. Not to any one human in particular. MO-126 never lingered anywhere long enough for that, but the species as a whole impressed him. On their own, they might be able to achieve great things, if they managed to survive long enough. Most sentient species did not. Normally they emerged, thought a bit about the universe, made up some stories to believe about it, and then banged rocks together for half a million years until the next ice age, super volcano, or big asteroid strike, leaving nothing to mark their passage except, perhaps, for a few scattered fossils and enigmatic paintings on deep cave walls. MO-126 wondered if humans were extinct on their home planet. Those working on Corporation projects might be all that remained of their species.

  Tork allowed their pack animal a long drink from a wide stream before turning to follow the bank. Eventually it would lead to their last stop on this mission, a small hill village east and south of the distant mountains. It was about two hundred and fifty kilometers in a straight line from the entrance to Hub Terminal Five in the northern portion of the continent. The route they took stretched as least twice that distance and required over two weeks of travel with a gond. They stopped at several other villages along the way with long stretches of nature, some native to this planet and some not, between each.

  Late that afternoon, they came upon a small flock of sheep being kept away from a flowering redfruit orchard by a sleepy shepherd and a diligent dog. The dog barked at their approach. MO-126 responded with a short “Woof.” Vaguely translated, it meant ‘We accept that this is your territory. We’re just passing through. We do not challenge your authority.’ It wasn’t much of a language as these things went, but it conveyed a lot for a single “Woof.” There were visual and olfactory components involved, too, of course, and those conveyed as much of the meaning as the vocalization did.

  The human shepherd looked up and waved but remained seated in the grass under a tree. The wave just meant, ‘Hello.’

  Their current assignment amounted to a simple status check. They would visit the villages on their list, see how they fared, check for obvious signs of potential problems, and reassure the primitives that someone would be back in the fall to trade for their harvest of redfruit. They did carry a few items to trade for any wool or folk art the villagers might have to offer. Primitive decorative items of carved wood, bone, or stone were minor commodities compared to the food the villagers produced, but there were profitable markets for them as well. Collectors existed somewhere for just about everything, even useless and ugly items, which the android dog thought described much of the folk art, especially the figurines of overly large women with no noses. This apparently made them even more valuable to some. Many of those who were seriously into the hobby seemed to enjoy discussing and arguing among themselves about the hidden meanings these types of things might have to those who created them. MO-126 assumed the responsible human folk artists were simply bad at making noses, but then he did not have a great deal of artistic sensitivity. Dogs do not have much sense of aesthetics, so the corporation did not include it in the firmware of their android likenesses. Whether the things held any meaning or not, someone would collect them, and the rarer they were the better. Each of the things created by primitives on Corporation projects was handmade, and therefore unique.

  They followed the stream around another hill and came upon a cluster of circular huts with thick, dry-fit stone foundations and wattle and daub upper walls topped with thatched, cone shaped roofs. Smaller buildings around them were made of woven sticks, as were a number of fences and pens for chickens and goats. MO-126 and his partner visited several villages much like it over the centuries. He found none of this unfamiliar.

  The old woman tied to a stake outside the largest of the structures was a bit different, however.

  She lay curled and motionless on the ground, her face covered by a tangled mat of graying hair. A dirty and shapeless tunic of flax linen draped from her boney shoulders to her ankles, which, like her wrists, were bound with rope to a stout, vertical pole firmly embedded in the dirt. MO-126 could not see her face, but he detected her slow breathing and assumed she slept. Villagers sitting outside their houses or roaming past sometimes cast glances toward her, which ranged from angry to suspicious to uncertain to sympathetic. The first two emotional assessments seemed the most prevalent.

  The village headman, a middle-aged man by the name of Gault, greeted the trade android. “Welcome, Master Trader Tork. It is good to see you.”

  “Greetings, Gault,” the trader said, ignoring the strange sight of the woman tied to the pole. It was, after all, none of his concern; although MO-126 found both the woman’s situation and Tork’s disregard for it somehow disturbing.

  The headman and the trader continued to talk while the android dog approached the bound woman. He sniffed and listened. A sound of chuckling and a scrap of conversation came from two young men leaning against a nearby building. They were discussing if MO-126 would pee on her. Both seemed to want him to. He was going
to disappoint them.

  The android dog cocked an ear when he heard the headman say “rope” and paid attention until it became clear the village leader was simply telling the trader what items he hoped to receive in trade.

  He returned his attention to the bound woman. Her situation confused him. She most certainly lived, but she must have been lying here for at least a day. Judging from her damp and soiled garment and from the condition of the ground around her, she did not leave even to relieve herself. Why would the villagers do this to someone?

  “Get away from her, you stupid dog, or she’ll call demons into you too!”

  MO-126 lifted his head and saw a broad-shouldered woman with autumn wheat hair and winter blue eyes. She stood by the door of one of the stone buildings. Her hands, balled into tight fists, rested belligerently on her wide hips, and she scowled at him.

  MO-126 searched his memory files. This was the headman’s younger sister, Ryenne. He remembered her from the last time they came here. She was talking to a redfruit tree at the time, and the tree, apparently, talked to her because she nodded and answered and patted its trunk in a consoling fashion as if she sympathized with all of its deciduous troubles—falling leaves, worms, ungrateful bees, or suchlike. At another time in another place, she might be diagnosed as schizophrenic. Here and now, she was considered holy. She was the village priestess, or whatever term they used. It varied from village to village, but someone like this existed in most of them. She provided their liaison to the gods, or to the spirits, or to the Force, or to whatever other mystical explanation the people here devised to explain the things they could not explain. MO-126 considered her harmless enough at the time, but now he suspected his initial assessment might require some modification.

  “Is there a problem?” Tork asked, walking toward her.

  “Of course there’s a problem,” she said in a tone that implied the trader was both an imbecile and blind. “Isn’t that obvious?” She unclenched a fist and pointed a finger to the woman tied to the post. “That’s the problem, but we’re taking care of it.”

  “What is she talking about?” the four-legged android sent to his two-legged companion.

  “I don’t know,” the trade android replied silently. “Maybe the old woman stole something or attacked somebody.”

  “Ask the headman,” MO-126 said.

  “No. We should stay out of this. It’s none of our concern.”

  That would be the proper response according to standard protocols, but MO-126 remained uncomfortable. Obviously they should not directly interfere. That would be overstepping their authority. If the situation required mitigation actions, a team would be sent in once the Mark Seven Project Manager determined the correct course of action. MO-126 felt that he and Tork should at least try to find out what was going on so that they could make a thorough report.

  Apparently the headman also believed Tork deserved an explanation because he offered one. “My sister has discovered that Galinda has been calling forth demons.” A nod of his head toward the disheveled old lady indicated her to be the aforesaid Galinda.

  The woman tied to the stake was either not asleep before or their voices wakened her. She struggled into a sitting position and raised her head. Dark bruises colored her forehead, cheeks, and eyes, clear signs of being intentionally beaten.

  “It’s not true, Gault,” the old woman said through cracked lips. I did not consort with demons. I don’t know who did, but it wasn’t me.”

  “Are you saying Ryenne is lying?” the headman said accusingly.

  “No. Of course not, but she must have made a mistake in her visions because it wasn’t me.”

  “The gods speak to me, and they do not lie!” Ryenne said sharply. “You are the one who called the demons.” The headman’s sister stepped closer to the bound woman but remained a few steps away, as if reluctant to approach closer. MO-126 doubted that it was solely because of the smell. She felt genuinely afraid. “You argued with Meyan about a clay bowl, didn’t you Galinda? I know you did because Meyan told me. And what happened to that bowl, Galinda? What happened to it after you argued with Meyan?”

  “It broke. You know that. But it was my bowl. I let Meyan borrow it, and when I asked for it back, she wouldn’t return it.”

  “That’s not the question. The next day, it broke; isn’t that so? They day after you argued about it, it broke.”

  “Meyan said she dropped it,” Galinda said. “I was real mad at her because it was my best bowl.”

  “Yes, you were mad at her, so you called forth demons to make her drop the bowl to spite her, didn’t you?”

  “No, Ryenne. I don’t know who did, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t call any demons, I swear.”

  The headman’s sister ignored her claim. “What about Mov’s chicken, Galinda. What do you know about Mov’s demon chicken?”

  “I didn’t know he owned a demon chicken,” she said, a bemused expression further distorting her battered face.

  “He doesn’t. It died before it hatched, thank the gods. But when they broke the egg, they saw that the dead chick had teeth, and chickens don’t have teeth, do they, Galinda?”

  “No, Ryenne. They don’t as far as I’ve ever seen.”

  “So why did this one have teeth do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was sick or something and that’s why it died.”

  “Sick chickens don’t sprout teeth. But demons have teeth, and anything possessed by demons before it’s born would have teeth, don’t you think?”

  “Well, I suppose. I really wouldn’t know. I don’t know anything about demons.”

  “No? Then why was one trying to reach you in the body of chicken? Mov lives right next to you, doesn’t he? His chicken coop is close to your hut, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes, but I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t? But you did, Galinda. You did, even if you don’t know you did. And do you know why? I know why. The gods told me why.”

  The old woman stared at her accuser with fearful curiosity.

  Ryenne lowered her voice. “There’s a demon in you, Galinda. It’s inside you, right there where your heart is, keeping it warm and alive with your hate and your disrespect. It’s found a good home in you, Galinda, and its reacting to your desires, whether you know it or not. It likes who you like, and it hates who you hate.”

  The old woman shook her head, her eyes wide and imploring. “But I don’t hate anyone. I just got mad at Meyan because she wouldn’t give back my bowl.” She sounded as if she might be trying to convince herself of this, as if she might seriously be entertaining the idea that Ryenne was right and that she did harbor an unknown demon.

  A crowd gathered while they talked. Several villagers nodded their heads, apparently much better able to follow the logic of Ryenne’s argument than MO-126 could. Most of it made little sense. He knew humans were not purely rational creatures, but most seemed to have at least one foot in reality. Ryenne might, at best, have a few fingers there with an extremely tenuous grip.

  “I’m not talking about Meyan, now,” the headman’s sister said. “It came clear to me when Gault’s sheep vanished. You had harsh words with him the day before that happened, didn’t you?”

  “He said I hadn’t carded my quota of wool, but I’d done all I could. I wasn’t shirking. My hands were aching the way they sometimes do, so I told him I couldn’t.”

  “That’s not all you said.”

  The old woman sighed heavily and lowered her head.

  “What else did you say?” Ryenne prompted her.

  “He got angry with me and said I wasn’t doing my fair share of the village work anymore. I tried to tell him about my hands. They get stiff, you know, and my knuckles swell sometimes. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t care about the troubles of an old woman with no children to help her and a husband long dead, so I said he was a poor headman and didn’t deserve any wool at all.”

  A self-satisfied smirk crossed Ryenne’s face. “A
nd the next day, three of his sheep go missing. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “Well, a bit maybe, but the old male was an outlier. He often strayed away from the rest, and the two pregnant ewes could have just wandered off to find a quiet spot to have their lambs. They do that sometimes.”

  “All three of them the day after you had harsh words with my brother? I don’t think so. The demon in you is a powerful one. It called others of its kind to ride those sheep and spirit them away because it felt your hatred for Gault.”

  Galinda slumped even more at her post, leaning on it for support. “I didn’t know,” she mumbled softly. “I didn’t mean to.”

  The strange interaction between the two women just got stranger. Did Ryenne somehow convince the pathetic old woman that she was responsible for these things? How could she have? None of it made any sense, at least not to the android attempting to listen attentively without appearing to, but it seemed to make a good deal of sense to the villagers.

  MO-126 increased the sensitivity of his audio receptors in order to eavesdrop on the nearby villagers nodding and mumbling among themselves. Their seemingly unanimous consensus was that Ryenne’s mystical sensitivities detected a hidden truth. The headman’s sister was undeniably a woman blessed by the gods and the old woman was obviously possessed by an evil demon. The android dog briefly wondered if they all suffered from a form of mass delusion, perhaps caused by some kind of brain-eating virus.

  “What do you say, Trader?” Gault asked. “Has my sister the right of it? You travel between villages. You must have seen cases such as this.”

  “Tell him it’s all nonsense,” MO-126 urged his companion. “Tell him he has to let the old lady free. We can find out what really happened to the lost sheep.”

  “I confess I have not,” the trade android replied, ignoring his partner’s silent pleas. Silent to all but him, that is. The villagers could not detect radio transmissions. He could. To them, the very idea would seem like magic.

  “Well, I suppose my sister is unique. She has always been…” the village headman paused to find the appropriate word and finally located one that would do…“different.”

  “She’s always been crazy, he means,” MO-126 said to Tork. “Tell him!”

  “She does seem to have a rare ability,” the humanoid android said to the headman. “The way she linked all of those events and came to the conclusion she did is not something most people could do, I suspect.”

  “Well, that much is true,” the android dog said. “She should swap places with Galinda. Ryenne’s the one that’s dangerous.”

  “Shut up, MO-126,” the trade android transmitted.

  “True,” the headman said, unknowingly agreeing with the artificial canine on that single point. “I know I never would have made those connections. But now that she has, well, I suppose it all makes sense.”

  MO-126 briefly wondered if he could shock the village leader back to reality by biting him but concluded he could not. The headman lived in a different reality. It might not be quite as far away as his sister’s, but in the headman’s world, demons could live in an old woman and steal sheep. In the android’s, people could be irrational and sheep could wander off on their own without any supernatural assistance. The two realities touched in some places, but they were lightyears apart in others.

  The trader surprised his furry partner when he asked what would happen to the old woman, a question probably prompted more by idle curiosity than by any concern for her welfare.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Ryenne answered. “The demon must be driven from her.”

  “How will you do that?” Tork asked her.

  “I’ve been giving that some thought,” she replied. “The demon is there because it’s comfortable. We have to make it uncomfortable. It feels what Galinda feels, so I think we can make it want to leave her.”

  Translated, that meant they would beat, starve, and leave the old woman tied to a pole until Ryenne, through mystical means of her own, determined it was safe to release her.

  “I see,” the trader said. “Well, I wish you good luck with that. For now, I have some things I’m sure you need—fish hooks, needles, rope, and some new tools. Let’s go back to my gond and I’ll show you what I brought.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Gault his sister is nuts?” MO-126 said to Tork as they turned back toward their pack animal.

  “Because we are not here to educate the primitives. We’re here to support the project, and so are they. Don’t let yourself be distracted from that. Their belief in demons doesn’t harm the project; in fact, it supports it. As long as they continue to try to understand things in ways like this, they’re not likely to put their simple, idyllic life at risk, are they? Look around. Clean air and water, abundant natural food, no wars…. The people here are fortunate. They don’t need to understand any more than what they already do. That’s good for the project, it’s good for the corporation, and it’s good for them.”

  “It’s not good for that old woman.”

  “Actually, I think she might disagree. She thinks they’re helping her by exorcising the demon. She’ll thank them for it.”

  “If she survives.”

  “Well, there is that. I don’t suppose she will, but the life of one primitive is a small price for what the corporation has given them.”

  MO-126 glanced back to the woman tied to the pole. She sat with her back against it, eyes closed and lips trembling as some of the villagers taunted her from a safe distance. This simply was not right. Three stray sheep should not be difficult to find, and once they were returned, everything would be fine.

  “I’m going to go look for those sheep,” the mobile observer android said.

  “Don’t!” Tork said.

  His furry partner disobeyed his instruction. “If I’m not back by tonight, find a way to give Galinda some water and maybe some food.”

  “I am not going to get involved. I don’t need a black mark on my record when I’m looking for a job after I leave here.”

  “Who’s to know?” the android dog said. “Besides, I’ll bite you if you don’t.”

  “Not funny,” the trader signaled. He continued to urge the other android to return, but MO-126 did not acknowledge him. Their integrated short-range communication systems would allow them to stay in contact reliably at a distance of a few kilometers. Even if MO-126 ventured farther than that, the signal would be relayed by the project’s satellite system. He could not pretend he did not hear him, but this did not mean he needed to listen.